Cross Your Fingers, We'll Need It

SOOO much has happened since my last post. For real, it's been crazy.

To start with my cousin, T, with her three month old baby came and stayed the week with us last week. She just left yesterday morning. It was a bittersweet week, to be sure. I so enjoyed that baby. I loved waking up and hearing him in the other room, playing. My boxer, Diesel-dog, was a perfect nanny nursemaid. He smelled dirty diapers and snorted, then looked at me like, "Uh, Mom? You wanna do something about this?" and if I didn't get the message, he'd do it again. And again. He would check on Chase periodically, especially if he was sleeping in his play-pen, and the adults were in the other room. I came in at one point because I couldn't find my dog, and there he was, laying beside the play pen, watching carefully. Chase toppled from his bottom onto his stomach, and Diesel leapt to his feet and whined at me until I set the baby back to rights.

I've said before that I work night shift--I worked all this week, so(I didn't get MUCH sleep), but I tried to sleep during the day. Unfortunately, anytime Chase cried during the day, Diesel would leap up onto my bed and frantically lick my face until I woke up. At which point, he would jump from the door to the bed, until I got up to check on the baby myself. Didn't matter if he'd stopped crying. Didn't matter that I told Diesel that T was taking care of him. (I swear, sometimes this dog knows EXACTLY what I'm saying.) When the baby left yesterday morning, Diesel pined. He searched the house, smelt the play pen, and the toy they forgot. He was nearly frantic, poor dear.

(Not my dog, but I doubt T would want her baby plastered all over my blog, and they found this position particularly comfortable.)

However, T was a little difficult for me. Mostly, because I'm very family oriented. I want us to all be doing something together. Dog parks, the library, board games, family movies, what have you. I all but couldn't convince her to leave the television. When her baby was awake, he was stuck there in front of the T.V., same as her. I found it very discouraging. Steven was a life-send though, because he made a formula run at 2:30 am, while I was at work, when T ran out. She texted me, I called him, and he never made one single complaint. He rocked the baby, he cooked dinner holding him, he crooned to him and watched out for him. I think he's going to be a good daddy someday. :) He still managed to juggle cooking us all dinner, packing my lunch, and seeing to the dogs when I ran out of time. I'm telling you, he's been a rock for me this hectic week.

Part of the reason it's been so hectic? My cousin, L, just moved in over top of us last night at 1 am. This has been very difficult for me. Two more polar opposites you've never met. I'm not a health buff, but I certainly care to be relatively fit and clean. She's niether. She refuses to do anything but watch television and play computer games. She and her fiance moved here without jobs, and no jobs on the horizon. Remember J? My ex-stepdad that I'm still close to? Through a very twisted, NOT incestual turn of events, he's her dad-dad. They don't speak. They can't stand one another. She's rude and crude and doesn't have a whole lot going on upstairs.

About a year and a half ago, she was living at home with her mom. She was internet dating a guy from Vermont.They were offered the very house we live in now. She took a sledge-hammer to my dear great grandmother's kitchen table, painted crosses and her name all over the house. Brought in a "witch" to cast a love spell.

I was terribly close to my great-grandmother. It kills me to think how L desecrated this house through all that. Mamaw would have wanted something so different. I've worked very hard, since L turned down the house to move to Vermont, to make it something she'd be proud of. Fast forward. She and the Vermont boyfriend moved back in with her mom. Fast forward again, about two months. She disappeared, alone, in the middle of the night. Computer, gone. Car, gone. Clothes, everything, gone.

Discovered later, she moved to Nevada, leaving a note saying she couldn't live with our family's women anymore. Now, several months after that, she and her new fiance have moved in above me. Without jobs. She entered my house with a cat litter pan and the declaration, "I come bearing cat shit." Those were the first words out of her mouth.

How in God's name are we going to stay here with them? Ugh.Ya'll cross your fingers for me and Steven. We're gonna need it.